Chemtrail believers frequently question why contrails are becoming more prevalent today compared to previous decades. The answer of course is the almost exponential growth in world air traffic since 1970, a period just before deregulation began in the USA and elsewhere.

While the figure of 386 million passengers is significant, the real measure is the RPK's or Revenue passenger kilometres carried out which takes into account both aircraft capacity and the distances flown, to give the true indication, or volume of air traffic in a certain year.

In 1970 the RPK figure was 465,000 million RPK's. In 2011 that had increased to 5000,000 million, including a 53% since 2000. This graphic was drawn from ICAO's forecast document.

The RPK figure is forecast to more than double in the next 20 years.

This is the main reason contrails are becoming more prevalent and will continue to do so in the future.

While the figure of 386 million passengers is significant, the real measure is the RPK's or Revenue passenger kilometres carried out which takes into account both aircraft capacity and the distances flown, to give the true indication, or volume of air traffic in a certain year.

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How does this break down into number of actual flights of potential contrail inducing planes (commercial, cargo, private etc...) per day/week/year etc? Most people do not realize there are literally thousands- if not tens of thousands- of flights every day.

I will try to find something but in the meantime, if you use the passenger aircraft fleet figures in the graphic provided, work conservatively on 5% of that number being involved in scheduled maintenance on any given day, and realise that the vast bulk of the 95% remaining are flying in the various worldwide domestic markets which means they would be scheduled for, say, an average of around 4-5 flights a day, then the number becomes quite impressive.

General aviation (GA) is all civil aviation operations other than scheduled air services and non-scheduled air transport operations for remuneration or hire.[1] General aviation flights range from gliders and powered parachutes to corporate business jet flights. The majority of the world's air traffic falls into this category, and most of the world's airports serve general aviation exclusively.[2

It was 13 million in 1990 and 13.9 million in 2015. That's only a 7% increase in 25 years.
The number of passengers ("enplanements"), however, increased from 460 million to 626 million (36% increase). Probably explained by bigger airplanes.

Worldwide, flights topped 100,000 per day (37.4 million per year) for the first time in 2014, according to this.

For 2004, this report says worldwide scheduled yearly flights were "almost 28 million" and that "the growth of world air travel has averaged approximately 5% per year over the past 30 years."

If the above quoted figures are right, though, for between 2004 and 2014/16 it puts average yearly growth at around 3.4% (US) and 3% (worldwide).

I'm surprised there isn't a nice handy graph showing total flight numbers year-on-year. Perhaps there is and I just can't find it. Though others have said it doesn't seem so easy to locate the figures.